


a loaded gun (you are the safety)

by CherFleur



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adopt children like it's going out of style, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Babysitting is The Way, Force-Sensitive Din Djarin, Force-Sensitive Original Character(s), Gen, Mentions of Slavery, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27545629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur
Summary: The galaxy had changed suddenly decades before, on the tail end of a war no one dared to speak of. On the massacre of a people that had lead into decades of tyranny.People adapted, as they always did. Things weren't as they'd once been, but if you were lucky, there were still some people who remembered how it was. Remembered how to be kind.Sometimes, compassion was the greatest weapon of all.
Relationships: OC & Din Djarin, OC & OC kids, OC & The Child, OC & The Covert
Comments: 39
Kudos: 108





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this is going, but I've been urged to post what I have, so here you go!

The Tribe didn’t have many external contacts anymore, not after so long hunted. Certainly, most of them had been destroyed just like Mandalore had been, like their few worlds, and several more still had abandoned the Tribe to save themselves.

Partially, they could understand this. Self preservation, protection of family and the desperate clinging to what could be lost or taken from them was life. It was not The Way, but it was life.

Mostly, it increased the disdain and distrust that the Tribe held for outsiders, especially those who had been hailed as Friend once upon a time. How most lacked honor and a dedication to duty and previously sworn oaths and signed contracts that had bound them together in honor.

One marked as Ally or Friend to Mandalorians had earned their protection and aid, had so sworn to give it in turn, and currently for their Tribe three were still in contact with them.

Kithak Tressk was one of them, a position he’d inherited from his deceased trade master.

A Weapon Smith was an important person to have a good relationship with, and it was lucky that this one had chosen not to join the Empire when they still stood. Had escaped the 'recruiting' for long enough that they’d forgotten about him or given him up as a loss not worth the expenditure. It was certainly good for them, that this man had been left to his devices, well educated and skilled as he was.

The tall Togruta knew his craft in the same way that the Armorers did, understood the grip and weight of a weapon the same way they knew the curve and density of the beskar.

He was also handy for emergency mechanical repairs on ships, if one had the credits to back it up, or the favors.

“Ah, back again, Mando,” the man wasn’t looking towards the door, bent over a flimsy with schematics on it, stylus in hand. “Did you break my rifle again?”

One part irritated at the possessive terms and two parts amused, he tilted his dented helm to show his exasperation. The man’s rear lek twitched against his back in amusement before he turned to look down at the bounty hunter standing in his doorway. As always, movements such as this were caught by the Togruta’s montrals, spotting even the softest vibrations at Kithak’s age.

It was rare to see his species in the outer rim these days, rarely leaving their home world, but it wasn’t something that he’d ever considered asking Kithak about. The past was behind them, they built their burdens into beskar, and the future was the Path which they carved for themselves.

Silently, Din gestured to the box hovering at his side, full of weapons and minor tech that he’d taken off of his latest bounty. They weren’t of a quality or style that anyone in the Covert would use, not even the foundlings, and Din wasn’t desperate enough to fill his personal armory of its empty spaces so as to go for substandard gear.

He had standards, after all.

“Oh, I see,” the contrast between white bottom lip and russet upper was always a surprise, lethal paired fangs subtle glimpses as the carnivore spoke. “You simply wish to have me recycle that trash into something worthwhile. Always the same! Always more work, never just gifts for poor Kithak.”

The man’s lavender and white swirled lekku twitched in amusement again, dark eyes glimmering with good humor as he made an absent hand sign of ‘No Offense/Joke’ in tradespeak.

Stepping forward, Din set the box on the counter for Kithak to pick through before turning to look at the various blasters along the wall. He may or may not be keeping a wish list for both himself and several members of the Covert that had expressed an interest. There was one in particular that he was looking at that had an adaptable powerpack – designed by Kithak – that he could charge spares for in hyperspace.

It didn’t draw extra power from the ship, just picked up ambient energy from the hyperdrive. It was… not within his budget.

_Most_ of them he couldn’t afford after tithing to the Covert to keep them supplied, but the Togruta would set aside something for Din or the others to work off if asked. Occasionally when they _didn’t_ ask and he noticed which one they were looking at, which he blamed on those montrals again. Kithak would take anything that the bounty hunter got off of his bounties and make something useable out of it, or sell it to someone who could.

“Hmm. Shiishacca!” he called out, lifting a slightly dinged multi spectrum scope out; it’s connector had snapped where it joined with a rifle. Din’s helmet did that for him as a standard feature, it was unnecessary to hold onto. “Get your precision tools, daughter.”

The little Wookie girl popped out of the back, her fur slightly fluffed in excitement as the summons, toolbox in hand and mildly ridiculous goggles on her head. Bright yellow eyes caught on Din in his slightly battered armor and she called a greeting to him in her high adolescent voice, waving slightly before hurrying to her father.

The girl stopped in front of him attentively and set her tools on the table, curiosity practically radiating off of her.

“Where’s your brother?”

“He’s hiding in the fresher again,” she told her buir in that sweet childish Shyriiwook. “He had another anxiety attack, and I didn’t want to spook him.”

Kithak’s longer than average for a male lekku twitched in displeasure and worry before he sighed and nodded. The sharp white marks on his prominent cheekbones mimicked the twinned fangs in his mouth, but they twisted the same as any flesh in a grimace.

“You made the right decision, Shiishacca. I’ll go get him. For now, I want you to run a full diagnostic on this scope and this observation orb.”

“Okay, papa.”

The tall muscular Togruta stepped trustingly out of the room to go get his wayward son, a display of trust that Din wouldn’t betray. Kithak was leaving him in charge of protecting his foundling, no matter how briefly that was, and the Mandalorian was honored by it.

It helped that Shiishacca knew her way around weapons and wasn’t particularly needy. Din wasn’t particularly good with kids, even human ones he couldn’t accidentally poison by feeding them the wrong fruit.

“We’re getting in some new power cores next week, Mando!” Shiishacca told him as she connected a pad to the scope. “And papa made you a special order of disintegration rounds. He said they’re more energy efficient than the standard design.”

“Did you help him?” he asked quietly through the modulation of his helmet. “The timed flashbangs you helped him with last time worked well.”

He’d blinded a Nautolan underwater with them, and that had been an unfortunate bounty job, but he’d managed. Mostly thanks to those flashbangs having an odd ringing effect underwater that his helmet had filtered out but had stunned his quarry.

The girl hiccupped with pleasure, squirming in place and fluffing slightly, fur rippling happily at the praise. She was standing nearly at Din’s chest height but she was just barely twelve now and not yet old enough for Wookie puberty. There were silvery patches in her brown fur from scars marked into too young flesh from people who’d wanted the strength of a Wookie at their disposal.

When Kithak walked back into the front again a few minutes later, it was with a small Twi’lek cradled in one arm and a large hand petting little lekku, work gloves removed. Din was relieved to note that the child had gained weight again, farther from the wraithlike waif he had been, those lekku closer to the healthy chubby they should be at that age.

Din could just make out the silver scar on the mound of the left one, where the Togruta had removed the slave chip.

The way it was healing, in another year or two it would fade even if the other marks never did, that midnight black skin freckled with pale gray. Even those looked to be fairing better and they’d already been scarred by the time that Kithak had gotten to him.

“Look little nebula,” the Togruta rumbled in Ryl accented by the plains of Shili. “The Mandalorian Knight is here!”

Little Isul had his face buried against his buir’s throat but turned enough to blink silvery blue eyes at him, tear tracks on his gray freckled features. His striking features were what had gotten him sold into slavery so young in the first place, but Din could say that he was a cute kid. A short lek twitched in shy greeting and the boy turned away again, hiding against the Togruta, who crooned softly to comfort him.

Foundlings were important.

Din was glad this ally hadn’t fallen away from them.

There was little enough support out there in the galaxy, if the Covert had lost their Weapon Smith as well, they’d be even tighter on credits.

That was all.

It had nothing to do with the fact that Shiishacca liked to work on his things and Isul had only spoken one word to him, a lispy ‘knight’ that had stuck. It didn’t have to do with how occasionally he’d find a few extra blaster packs in his things when he got to his ship, or a couple more rations and a new vibro blade.

Nothing at all.


	2. Chapter 2

The first clue that Din had that something was wrong – _going_ to go wrong – was the way the hairs on the back of his neck prickled beneath his helmet.

A well-adapted sense for threats and danger was necessary when working as a bounty hunter in the Outer Rim, especially as a Mandalorian one. His Covert had sporadic contact with other surviving Tribes, but they all tried to stay hidden, even from each other, in case they were found and culled. No one wanted to be the one who led to succeeding fallen Coverts, to the extinction of their culture.

Most people who bothered Din did so with the thought of credits and beskar. Of the glory of taking out one of the famed Mandalorians of which there were so few left, legendary warriors as they had once been called.

He had, on more than one baffling occasion, been mistaken for _Boba Fett_.

Which was both ridiculous and also kind of exasperating because just because they were both Mandalorian – even if Boba wasn’t of his sect – they didn’t look anything alike. Green was very distinctive, and they also wore different class armors seeing as Din wasn’t a commando, instead a sentry. The lack of jetpack – which he’d _trained_ with but never used – as well as scoping mount was kind of telling in his opinion.

So one could say that his instinct for trouble was more than a little honed, and that was what had him turning away from the stall selling rations in time to see the altercation.

Any emotional response he might have had sank deep beneath battle calm as his hand automatically lifted to rest on a blaster even before he’d finished turning. An adult Wookie – merc, by the looks of him – had caught hold of Shiishacca by the tool harness she wore, the sheer difference in size between them making how _young_ she was stand out. He was used to seeing her next to human sentients or her buir, who was just as tall – if not taller – but not as broad in frame.

“Who do you belong to, _therthecc_ ,” Din didn’t understand that last one, but he wasn’t completely fluent in Shyriiwook. Didn’t sound good, either way. “Could use new colony stock.”

“No one! Let go!” the shrill cry in Shyriiwook brought more attention to the male who had her in hand, her own scrambling at her buckles to remove the harness. She’d been taught how to escape such holds, apparently. “I’m not product! Papa said so!”

“Don’t know who has you calling them _papa_ , but you don’t _smell_ –”

A tug on Din’s cloak had him glancing down to see familiar silvery blue eyes in a dark face, little Isul tucking under the cloth and against his leg. As soon as he registered the boy, he looked back to see Shiishacca drop to the ground and scurry away towards him as well.

If the little boy was there, then –

When a familiar armor gloved hand clamped down on the Wookie’s shoulder, Din felt the hairs on his neck settle once again. The Wookie dropped the harness to reach for Kithak’s hand, only to have his wrist snagged as well in a brutal grip.

Yeah, Isul wasn’t usually far from his buir, and he _never_ went out without him.

“I’m papa,” the Togruta snarled directly in the Wookie’s face before smashing the heavy base of his montrals into the surprised face of the mercenary. The akul teeth on the headdress probably didn’t feel particularly good either. “Don’t touch _my kids_.”

Something – bone, probably – snapped as Kithak twisted, pivoting on his heel and showed a particularly alarming amount of strength by throwing the Wookie into a basket stall. The Wookie cried out in pain and went to stand, one of his arms twisted at an unfortunate angle as he snarled, blood matting the fur on his face from the untraditional keldabe kiss. Din felt vaguely impressed that the Togruta had used sensory organs as a battering ram when _he_ sometimes got headaches from the same maneuver.

What looked to be other members of the Wookie’s mercenary squad shifted, but Din wasn’t the only one to draw his weapon to keep them uninvolved.

They must be new, because everyone local knew not to mess with the Weapon Smith of Navarro and his kids. There wasn’t anyone else around who did as good of work as Kithak did for as fair prices, and they’d all heard how when the man had taken his hiatus he’d dismantled a slave ring and ended up with his children.

He’d laughed and called it _relaxing_ when asked about it.

One didn’t mess with the Bounty Hunter Guild’s favorite weapon dealer and tech. Even if he hadn’t had been a Friend of the Covert, Din would have needed to intervene simply to keep the supply open.

As it was, the other Bounty Hunters didn’t get the perks that Din and the Covert did, but Kithak was still the best and cheapest way of restocking munitions and weapons.

The Wookie fell silent as Kithak punched him in the head, standing a head and shoulders over a good portion of the crowd and bearing his fangs in challenge to anyone else who thought to come for him.

“Sorry about the stall, Arka,” the Togruta spoke when everyone went about their business. “I’m sure that furball has something to pay for the damages on him.”

The old Weequay woman apparently named Arka waved him away and started to pick through the Wookie’s supply belt, grabbing a data chip and a credit one. The data one she tossed to Kithak and then asked him to remove the trash so his friends could deal with him. Kithak of course did this by wedging a booted foot under the Wookie and rolling him out into the street again before stepping over the unconscious body.

What mercenaries hadn’t already scattered pulled back when those dark eyes swept over them, long lekku curling tight with a hunter’s instinct.

“Are you alright, Shiishacca?”

“I’m okay,” she spoke softly, voice shaking slightly, though most wouldn’t be able to tell. “He just scared me a little.”

Kneeling down, the Togruta picked up her tool harness from where it had fallen when he’d tossed the Wookie and held it out to her. Once it was in her hands, little Isul darted out from under Din’s cloak to climb onto his buir and tuck himself under one lavender and white swirled lek.

Snorting at the action, Kithak wrapped his arms around the little Twi’lek and stood, putting a soothing hand on the top of Shiishacca’s head.

“Did you get to deliver the messages?”

“No, papa.”

“Do you still want to, or do you want me to do it?”

Fur rippled as the girl considered, resituating her harness and the ridiculous mag goggles that had been nocked askew. Little sharp teeth clicked together twice as she thought before Shiishacca looked at her buir’s patterned face and nodded.

“I can do it, papa.”

“Brave girl. Go on then.”

Huffing and smoothing her fur, the young Wookie stepped forward to speak to one of the waiting Bounty Hunters; she often informed them when weapon’s maintenance was done or an order ready.

An older Zabrak with the brilliant coloring of Dathomir – an escapee from before the Empire, likely – knelt and gravely accepted a flimsy with estimates on it from the girl’s hands. He stood and nodded to her, tipping his horned head to Kithak as he walked past the small family, the Togruta standing behind his older foundling, the younger in his arms, watchful.

A few other’s received flimsies as well, but most of them got verbal confirmation of orders or renewed time estimates.

While they went about this, Din turned back to haggling with the stall owner over the nutrient blocks that still had branding on them.

Never could quite trust the unmarked ones, not unless you knew who was prefabbing them for sale and trusted their know-how.

Another tug on his cloak had him turning to look at Shiishacca as he was putting the blocks on a hover pallet for transport.

“Your upgrade is ready, Mando!” she growled to him cheerily. “It was a lot of fun to work on.”

“Thank you,” he returned, stepping away from the stall, attention solely on her and not her buir. “I’m glad you’ve gained this experience.”

She fluffed pleasantly before waving and moving on to her next target, a Dug with a prosthetic limb.

It was good that she didn’t look particularly shaken up, but considering who her buir was and what he did to those who threatened her, Din couldn’t say he blamed her. His own adoptive parent had been somewhat protective, but he had usually waited until he was sure that Din couldn’t get out of a jam on his own.

He also hadn’t been able to toss a Wookie.

“That Wookie’s not gonna make it off planet, is he?” he asked the Togruta who had stopped beside him without looking over.

“Oh, who could say? I simply _fix_ weapons, I have no idea how they get broken most of the time,” Din could practically feel the cold smile on that predatory face. “As long as my children are safe, I couldn’t care less about a disappearing Wookie.”

Tipping his head in acknowledgment of what he’d already figured, he lifted a hand in farewell to take the supplies to the Covert. They weren’t running low yet, but it was always good to be prepared for a shortage than to think optimistically.

This wasn’t the galaxy for optimism.

“Don’t forget to pick up your order!” the Togruta called after him. “Or I’ll sell it to someone else.”

Din was smiling under his helmet, but there was no one who would be able to tell within range, not even the Weapon Smith and his cheating montrals.

No he wouldn’t.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing he heard when he limped into the corridor, small case of beskar in hand, was the sound of foundlings laughing.

As always, that tense place in his chest that he froze over every time he stepped out of the Covert’s familiar embrace relaxed. While he couldn’t say that he got along with everyone in the Tribe – Paz was still a dick even as an adult – it was home. It was safety.

And if the children were laughing then there wasn’t some new crisis to keep an eye on.

Foundlings were better at catching onto tension than most adults, and perhaps some of that was from being raised by the body language of faceless Mandalorians in armor. Din tended to think that it was the instinct of the defenseless to understand when peace and prosperity was threatened.

He remembered the tensions during the Clone Wars as a child even if he didn’t remember much about the reasons for it. He remembered that his parents had expected an attack and had tried to hoard credits and supplies just in case and how it hadn’t helped them in the end. Peaceful farmers couldn’t fair in the rigors of battle and war, so Din honored them by remembering that they had _tried_ and that he lived for it.

So the sound of the foundlings laughing and playing was a blessing, when he’d returned to the Covert too many times to mournful silence as one of their own was found dead. As they waited for one of their own to either wake or pass onto the branching Path in the stars where they could not yet follow.

The small amount of beskar he carried felt heavy, but that may also have been because he’d been shot twice and his bacta was wearing off.

When he tipped his head at a scout, she nodded in answer.

The Armorer would see him for the bit of their beskar that he had managed to return to them.

Before he stepped into the Forge Room he heard arguing in Mando’a in two familiar voices, though one was normally ragging on him for damaging his weapons, and the other used to teach him hand to hand. Din had gotten out of that class group as quickly as possible.

There was only so many times he could handle getting tossed around by karking Paz with all of his adolescent anger issues. Sure, he’d learned to survive and take down bigger opponents, but he’d spent most of his teenage years getting his ass kicked before he hit his growth spurt.

“ – I’m _telling_ you, you karking bantha panting old curmudgeon, that it can’t be _part_ beskar!”

“I’ve seen beskar used for –”

“I’m sorry, which one of us has six engineering degrees? As well as this little thing called common _karking_ sense?”

Yes, that definitely sounded like Kithak berating Old Gorm. He could hear the Core in his accent coming out when the Togruta got irritated.

When he turned the corner, he leaned against the doorframe to take in the scene momentarily, feeling both bewildered and resignedly amused. It wasn’t often that they called the Weapon Smith into the catacombs themselves instead of meeting him at his shop or at a drop point somewhere. Old Gorm tended towards doing escort missions these days as an old commando, but he had two prosthetic limbs that needed maintenance once in a while.

Prosthetics with weapons upgrades, of course.

At least one of those degrees that Kithak was currently shoving down the Old warrior’s throat was in biomechanical replacements.

The grumpy old Mandalorian was seated on a hover table, leaned back on his other prosthetic, dissected metal leg on display and helmet tilted in irritation. Beside him partially leaned over the prosthetic was Kithak wearing a personalized weld hood that was vaguely reminiscent of a Mandalorian helmet without a T visor that covered his montrals and front lekku with interlocking metal.

At his side in his own miniaturized weld hood – still looked huge on him – was Isul, who was chasing after Kithak’s twitching rear lek in a ridiculously adorable scene. As Din watched, the little Twi’lek tried to catch it by jumping, fingertips grazing the end.

A quiet noise of excitement, a deliberate move meant to keep the boy interested in the game by making him think he could catch the lek.

The motions were so controlled that it was obvious the Togruta was doing it on purpose, entertaining his youngest by swinging it side to side. How the man could play with his son and work on the internals of a limb that was routinely stuffed with thermal detonators Din didn’t know, but he commended his multitasking skills.

Over by the Forge, the Armorer was down on one knee looking over a schematic with a ruffled Shiishacca and nodding along to the girl’s commentary. Something about incompatible materials and alloys, it sounded like.

Not his area of expertise. Or interest.

Sparks flew in an impressive arc as Kithak unhooked something and Old Gorm swore explosively.

“What did I tell you?!” Kithak spat out in irritation even as his hands kept working, leaning to the side so that his apron caught little sparks and his swinging lek led Isul away from the spray. “Using a partial beskar internal setup just makes everything else wear out too fast! Beskar grinds everything else down and stays the same itself so the limb can’t compensate, and you run through things four times as quickly. This isn’t the old days, you old bastard. We don’t have the material we need for a full internals replacement so it can hold up to the wear and tear.”

Din looked down at the single brick of beskar he had found consideringly. The idea of having enough beskar for a full limb replacement was mind boggling, yet he couldn’t help but find it intriguing.

He had no plans to lose any limbs, but it was still a thought.

“It was that damn rancor,” Old Gorm argued stubbornly, reaching out to steady Isul when he tried to peek up onto the table but decided it was too tall, falling back down. “Was doing just fine before that.”

Kithak was silent for a long moment before he grabbed some plyers and pulled something out of Gorm’s leg to hold it up to the light. The gleam of beskar was easy to see where it was wrapped around mangled durasteel; it _might_ have been a compression coupling once.

The Togruta wordlessly turned his head to look at Old Gorm who huffed and looked ready to gear up for another argument.

“How many degrees? Hmm?” was asked tellingly, and finally the stubborn old warrior sighed in aggravated defeat. “If you try to self-repair your _explosive limb_ again, I will throw you in a rancor pit _myself_.”

Isul gasped audibly, turning his head to look at Old Gorm worriedly, little black hands signing ‘No/Bad/Parent upset’ at the trainer, hood muffling the twitches of little lekku. The old bastard in question in turn sent what counted as a glare to the Weapon Smith for getting scolded by a toddler.

As someone who had also had the Togruta’s kids used against him in the name of ‘personal safety’ he could sympathize.

As someone that routinely got his ass kicked by the other Mandalorian, he felt a vague sense of amusement.

“Isul would be so upset if I had to toss you into a pit,” the man looked down at him child. “Wouldn’t you, my little nebula?”

The boy nodded quickly, sticking himself to his buir’s leg, elbow wrapped around the back of a knee in a tiny hug.

“What about you, Shiishacca?” something snapped in the prosthetic, further proving Kithak’s point. “Do you want me to toss him into a pit?”

“We should just give the leg to Jawas!” was cried in frustration, making Din’s brows raise in surprise. It was difficult to get a rise out of that kid, but she looked near murderous with aggravation. “They would take better care of it! I personally know at least six adolescents who have better repair skills and don’t even know _Tradespeak_ yet!”

She didn’t seem to understand that _most_ children didn’t know Tradespeak until they were in their teens, but Kithak used it so automatically that both children had picked it up.

At the girl’s side, the Armorer ducked her head in amusement even as she motioned for Din to enter and stop letting the doorframe hold him up. Which was a shame, because it took some of the weight off his banged up leg.

Old Gorm sat silently for a long moment after the declaration before he sighed and lay back fully, giving into the inevitable.

Stepping fully into the room, Din felt the attention shift to him even as Kithak continued his work. Little Isul made a soft noise and turned around while Shiishacca waved at him and turned back to her work, more absorbed in that than his appearance. She was certainly a dedicated apprentice in her trade, he could give her that.

The little Twi’lek turned around where he leaned against his buir’s leg pulled the weld hood off his head, showing dirt smeared on his black face. Those wide silvery blue eyes looked up at him worriedly, lekku curling with his concern as one little hand used Tradespeak.

‘Hurt/Unwell’?

Din tapped his chest back and spread his fingers. ‘Small Hurt/Not Bad’.

A little gaptoothed smile with tiny but sharp fangs was shot his way before the boy was distracted by the deliberate twitching of Kithak’s rear lek. Drawn like a bird to something shiny, that one.

“Your hood, little nebula,” the Togruta glanced down, fondness clear as well as amusement. “Remember the rules?”

“Help!” was whispered, the boy pulling the hood down again, hiding that wide eyed stare and little lekku. “’M helpin’.”

It occurred to Din that Kithak had taught his children Mando’a as well, and that they’d been speaking it the whole time. This also was a strange sort of relief the same as laughing children in the Covert, and a Friend on the outside of their Tribe who would know their words. Would raise his foundlings to follow in his footsteps as one who walked beside if not within the Tribe itself, could be the aid on the outside.

“That’s right,” continued the buir in the room. “If you want to help me, you have to be safe!”

“Mm,” a little hand reached for that twitching lek, his form of ‘help’ apparently. “Helpin’ papa.”

Shaking his head at the display – which decidedly _didn’t_ pull on his heartstrings – he lifted the box with the bar of beskar for the Armorer. The woman stood from her silent knelt position to take it from him with the importance meant for such and bowed her head in acceptance, which he returned.

“You have sustained injury,” she spoke while admiring the shine of the blank brick. “Do you need further treatment?”

“It’s nothing life threatening.”

“Then all is as it should be. One of our own and a piece of our culture returned to us.”

Really, it hadn’t even damaged his armor, which was what was important. Flesh healed from minor blaster shots, but it became compounded on his durasteel plate and the mechanisms inside in comparison. If he had beskar he’d probably care more for his flesh beneath because that was what would impart his story into the song it hummed into eternity, but as it was his armor did not grow stronger under stress. It was no bone to be rebroken and healed stronger.

“Did you lose one of my vibro blades?!”

Din sighed and turned, lifting his hands out of the way automatically as Shiishacca reached for the blaster he’d cracked the casing on.

“My blaster!”

Honestly, why was it that Kithak got so offended that _Din’s_ things were damaged or lost?


	4. Chapter 4

Karking hells it was cold.

Din didn’t normally have problems with his ship, didn’t normally need extensive repairs, but he also didn’t normally run into an old mind field of planetary wreckage.

The place where Jedha had been wiped off the map was a shitstorm on a normal day, and he’d needed to drop out of hyperspace for a handover in the area. It would have been fine if a hunk of that dead moon hadn’t gotten caught in his trail and ignited after the client had left.

Flammable space refuse had not been on his list of worries, but wonders never did cease, really.

Sure he’d been paid, but he might end up a void bound body if he couldn’t figure out how to turn back on the heat and repair the hole in his hull enough to stop venting. He could limp to the nearest trade center or station if he managed that, but hyperspace was out of the question with his hull as messed as it was. He’d need to be mad or desperate to make a jump with a damaged ship with less than 80% hull integrity.

Din tried not to be either of those things, they rarely kept one alive.

Hull integrity was only _critically_ important to survival when it came to making jumps, and without his environmental controls working, it was either die quick or die slow.

He _really_ wasn’t a mechanic, and if the universe could stop tripping him up into various pitfalls, that would be nice. Nice easy bounty ends with him trapped in a silent grave, the space outside leaving an odd ringing in his ears even though he knew it wasn’t real. It was like a thousand voices were whispering in the background, market stalls and sizzling meat and spices a vague sensation on his tongue, in his nose.

It was like he was standing in a red clay and dust market, acolytes in red robes walking past, a blind mummer with a stick watching him, smiling, a large shadow at his back.

Outside, the debris glimmered in the light of the nearest star, crystalline and fragmented, seemingly mocking him.

Honestly, he had thought that hallucinating was something that happened _after_ hypothermia set in, but you learned something new every day.

Din would have preferred to go out in battle, but the galaxy could be a cold bitch on a good day and was currently treating him like a karking heavy bag. Even if he had managed not to get injured on this bounty, it was still likely that he was going to have some recovery to make after he got out of this jam.

_If_ he got out of this jam.

Sitting isolated in the cockpit so that he could warm up some before returning to attempting repairs, Din shivered in his armor.

His thermals were shot, had been for a while, but they’d needed a bone mender for the Covert more than he’d needed the temp control. Usually he was on bearably warm planets, was adapted to the desert planets and harsh suns that his bounties often frequented. It was a rare time when they ran to the frozen moons or icy planets to get away from whatever or whoever was paying for them.

Currently, Din was vaguely regretful that he hadn’t budgeted for a new set when he knew his was broken, but there was little use in dwelling on it.

He’d learn from this if he lived, and he’d always keep a spare set handy.

There were a lot of lessons to be learned in this way, and Din was a reluctantly apt student of surviving the wider galaxy and its foibles.

The Armorer was going to laugh at him. Not out loud of course, she was much too composed for that, but she’d be silently judging him with her head tilted _just so_ to let him know what she thought of this. She’d do it during his funerary rites too if they managed to find his body to burn.

At least he’d be spared it then.

His comm beeped at him suddenly.

Looking at it with near incredulity – he rarely got messages, and he’d swore that it had been on the fritz – he reached out to answer.

“ _Knight, knight, knight –_ ” spoken as a quiet, but familiar litany was what greeted him first.

A tiny holographic image of the Togruta appeared, the little Twi’lek jumping in and out of the projection with ridiculous amounts of energy. Someone had gotten into the sweets or stolen kaf because he recognized the signs from the foundlings in the Covert.

Usually, they were followed by tired, resigned buirs and minders.

“… Kithak?” fell from his lips without thought as he pulled his cloak close around him again. “That you?”

“ _Yes, yes – hold on Mando – Isul, darling, my sweet little nebula. Please stop bouncing around and go check on your sister in the kitchen_.”

“ _Mmmmmm…_ ” the little form paused in it’s leaping to stare up at his buir in near betrayal. “ _Dun’ wanna.”_

“ _Not actually a request if you can’t stop while I’m on the call._ ”

At that, the little Twi’lek faceplanted against the Togruta’s leg, arms hanging limp at his sides as he sulked quietly. His desire to be with his parent more than to play was both clear and a little heart wrenching in a way. Isul didn’t take separation well, not from his bastion of safety, yet he was still learning how to freely have fun.

Boundaries and structure were important, especially when healing from the abuse of slavery, even when it meant causing some distress.

“ _Thank you,”_ the image looked up again and the Weapon Smith paused. “ _… Is there frost on your visor?_ ”

Aw, sithspit.

This was definitely worse than the Armorer hearing about this second hand, because Kithak had an unfortunately crisp memory. And seemed to enjoy bringing up the mistakes in Din’s past as a bounty hunter and as someone who had very basic repair skills. The man _still_ brought up the vibro blade handle that Din had temporarily fixed with scraps.

It had worked! It still worked _perfectly_ fine for stabbing things!

“Is there a reason for your call?” he said instead of answering. “I’m a little busy.”

“ _Busy freezing to death,_ ” was said incredulously. “ _I was going to ask a favor but send me your system damage report instead. I’ll walk you through what you can fix now before you become a meat popsicle in a fancy suit._ ”

Honestly, that was one of the best things that Din had heard since his alarm had gone off about collisions and hull damage. Fancy suit aside.

“Favor?”

Kithak waved a hand, grimacing slightly.

“ _I’ll take care of it. Just an errand on Tatooine I was going to ask you to deal with, but I’ll manage. Now, that report, if you please._ ”

So sitting in the cockpit he huddled over his comm unit and discussed tools he had access to, which one were broken, and what could be done to have the Razor Crest able to limp home. There wasn’t much he could do about external damage himself, he had no environmental suit, his armor without the necessary expensive upgrades.

Din would have to get it repaired enough to reach Nevarro and the more mechanically inclined of the Covert.

It was a relief, however, to get some of the environmental power pack, even if he had to fry a few circuits to get it.

Ah, blessed warmth.

“What’s on Tatooine?” he asked Kithak, his comm patched through his helmet as he worked. “What’s important enough to warrant a favor?”

Because that was outside of just weapons and repairs, that was an out of the way exchange that didn’t involve his profession as Weapon Smith. As a Friend he was guaranteed certain protection – not that the man really needed it – but that didn’t mean that they waved fees for bounties or anything. It just meant that he had priority.

They were still professionals, still Mandalorians. Not a charity.

“ _A life,_ ” the Togruta said, easy as you please, as if he hadn’t been planning to request Din go save someone. “ _I’m probably going to be gone by the time you get here. Shouldn’t take me long to grab who I’m going for, but the shop probably won’t be open for a few days after I get back.”_

Freeing another slave, maybe? Most were supposedly released on Jabba’s death, as the Empire pulled out what few resources they had there. Didn’t mean much in the long run, but that was all that Din could think of requiring saving on Tatooine who wasn’t some idiot that got themselves into something over their head.

He tended to side with the Tusken Raiders on the settlers causing their own problems front, since he could live off the land perfectly fine in their traditions. For frontiersmen, moister farmers and miners tended to have little in the way of marketable survival skills.

Still, if Kithak was going to be gone…

“Will you drop a shipment early?”

They still needed supplies, even if the Togruta wasn’t going to be there for the normally scheduled timeframe.

During active repairs and bypasses Isul had wandered off, but he returned to reach his arms up for his father, a yawning Shiishacca behind him. The boy was lifted, where he pulled one of Kithak’s lek over his head like a curtain, and the Wookie leaned into her buir’s free side. He wrapped an arm around her in turn, ruffling fur gently in affection.

“ _Yeah, I’ll drop it. Don’t worry about that. Just get that hunk of junk back into working order. I’ll give it a looksee when I get back._ ”

Din figured whoever it was that Kithak was going to save, they’d be fine once he got to them. The man had tenacity and good luck on his side in spades.

“Not junk.”

Outside, dead Jedha laughed with ghostly mirth.


	5. Chapter 5

It was good to be warm again.

Even _if_ he had gotten an inarticulate noise of rage from one of the Covert’s more mechanically inclined at the sight of the Razor Crest. Xe had looked at him with a resigned kind of horror that he was almost used to after returning with either injuries or a damaged ship repeatedly over the years. At this point in his life, Din was mostly resigned to the unfortunate things that happened to him when he was away from the Covert. Things usually ended up alright, even if he and his ship were more banged up than not against the crooked odds of the galaxy.

Didn’t make it any less awful, but it made it easy to accept.

He’d only had surface damage from the cold as well, so that meant that the Medics couldn’t bully him into another physical exam. They were still palming hypos when he walked through the canteen for food, and he half expected them to ambush him every time he returned.

Still needed those thermals though.

A familiar voice called behind him, laced with amusement and incredulity, something teasing at the edges.

“How did I _still_ get back here before you?”

Something small and warm and familiar slammed into him and plastered against his leg, and he set a gloved hand between little lekku on instinct. Isul was becoming increasingly more tactile with the members of the Covert, but Din was privately a little smug to be the favorite.

Other than the Armorer of course. She was everyone’s favorite, and there was no use trying to compete with a woman who beat beskar into submission. And occasionally her fellow Mandalorians.

“Kithak,” turning his head to watch the Togruta approach, Din sighed internally at future mischief. “Ran into some pirates on the way so I was delayed.”

Once the Weapon Smith was closer, he noticed some bruising on his face in the healing stages, and there was a bandage around his left lek about a handspan long. His thick, striped arms were covered now where normally they were bared to the open air, which likely meant he was wounded there as well and didn’t want to startle the kids. It would appear that whoever it was that he’d gone to save had been in something of a precarious position, one bad enough that the large Togruta was injured even minorly.

Those dark eyes narrowed on Din, assessing him in that way he had that made the bounty hunter want to shift his feet like a child. While Kithak was only a little over a decade his senior, the man had earned his buir aura more than most; it made him oddly nostalgic for his own buir, without the faint grief thoughts of him usually brought.

Kithak’s ability to keep the dark at bay was one that the Covert admired, especially with the foundlings he had taken in, with the heavy chains of their pasts.

“You jumped into hyperspace, didn’t you,” it wasn’t a question, and it was still a mystery how the man always _knew_. “Crazy Mandalorians.”

“Didn’t have much choice. It was either let them blow me up or risk doing it to myself. Trust myself more than pirates.”

The glance the Togruta gave him was almost exasperatedly fond as his lekku swung with a shaken head, different headdress beads clinking together. No akul teeth today, it looked like, and it was a rare time when the man wore something more complicated.

Din vaguely wondered if there was some kind of booby trap in it, considering he only ever saw Kithak wear something different when he was traveling.

With the slightly more elaborate headdress, it brought to attention the split in curved montrals where a synthetic band had been wrapped, some kind of pale stones imbedded in the center. A cage of some sort was wrapped around what looked like colored glass or crystal hanging between his montrals on his forehead, a striking violet against white, red, and pale lavender.

Din’s skin hummed under his armor at the sight of it, but he pushed that aside. He was recovering from near frostbite, of course he was going to get a little tingly.

“I don’t know why I expect anything like common sense from you people. I should know better by now that you’ll do anything for a good explosion.”

“Didn’t though. Blow up.”

It wasn’t exactly a good defense, but it was what he had, and the older man simply shook his head with a sigh and patted him companionably on a pauldron. Isul mumbled against Din’s leg, tilting his lekku one after another against the Mandalorian’s hand before he leaned back, little hands twisted in fabric to hold his weight. Those silverly blue eyes blinked up at him widely for a moment before the Twi’lek tilted his head as hearing something in those tiny ear cones.

The fact that he had the traditional cones instead of human ears spoke to the lack of hybridization in his family line. He was likely as close to pure Twi’lek as it got these days, the males showing mixed heritage more easily than the females.

Another reason he’d been highly sought on the slave market.

“Papa,” was said quietly with something like confusion and curiosity as Isul looked in the direction of the Razor Crest. “Papa, _song_!”

_Song?_ Din wondered as the boy let go of him and darted off ahead uncharacteristically. _What song?_

Phantom laughter he’d been ignoring since he’d hit the debris field echoed in his ears, and he shook his head to clear it.

An odd look came to Kithak’s face, one that Din couldn’t quite decipher.

“Just where did you get caught out and damage the Razor Crest?”

“Jedha debris field.”

For a moment, the Togruta said nothing, features blank, before he took a slow, deep breath that expanded his chest by increments, one of the most controlled motions Din had ever seen. It was both impressive and slightly worrying because there were rarely things that shocked or shook Kithak, certainly not enough that he showed it.

“Ah.”

With that _oh-so_ enlightening soft sound, the man followed after his son, steps steady and sure with a long stride, but something heavy weighing down his shoulders. There was an ashy new scar on his rear lek, looking to have been treated by bacta, meaning that it had been relatively deep, and it swayed with his steady footfalls. The cadence reminded Din of how heavy even a gram of beskar could feel, the weight of a culture pared down to its component parts and hidden underground.

It was the weight and wishes of the dead, waiting to be reforged anew.

The hull of the Razor Crest – what hadn’t been shoddily patched – glimmered slightly in the light of the hangar, coated in dust. Standing in front of one of the slightly dinged thrusters was Isul, his head tilted ridiculously far back as he stared at something on the side of the ship.

And then, the kid _waved_ at the Razor Crest.

Pausing in sudden, well, not _unease_ exactly, but something similar, he watched Kithak kneel down beside the little Twi’lek and follow his pointing finger towards a torn part of the hull. A larger hand traced the path and pointed as well, head tilting inquisitively, lek bumping into that small body beside him.

Isul nodded enthusiastically, and when Kithak stood, the boy bounced in place, humming an almost familiar tune as Din got to moving again. The Togruta examined the side of the ship for a moment, considering, and then just as Din was coming up even with the kid, the man bent his knees slightly before leaping into the air.

His heart stuttered in his chest for a moment as the Weapon Smith caught something halfway up the hull and hung there.

Suddenly, Din was entirely glad that he’d never had a bounty for a Togruta before because he never wanted to have to fight someone who could leap like that unaided. Predator races were bad enough when they were the same size as him like a Zabrak, getting hit by someone who could toss a Wookie would be… unpleasant.

The hair raised on the back of his neck as Kithak pulled something out of a gap in the hull with a sharp screech of metal before dismounting the ship once again, something in hand.

Turning back to them, the man knelt in front of the near vibrating Isul and presented his find.

It was… some kind of crystal?

Multifaceted, multicolored, and partially luminescent, reminding Din of the shimmer of debris that had drifted past the cockpit as he’d sat waiting to freeze to death.

Wide silvery blue eyes practically shone as a little black hand flecked with gray freckles reached out tentatively towards the hunk of crystal nearly the size of his head.

Just before he touched it, it cracked.

“Papa!” the boy whispered in panic, yanking his hand back. “Papa, ‘s broken!”

“No, no, it’s okay my little nebula,” the Togruta placed his free hand on top of chubby little lekku. “It’s not breaking. It’s only changing a little bit.”

“Changin’?”

“Mhmm. See?” a large hand guided a small one back to the crystal. “It’s alright. You didn’t break anything, sweetheart. I’m not upset.”

Oh, that kind of stung. Despite whatever weird things were happening, despite having a bizarre desire for the weird Jedha crystal, the little Twi’lek was afraid of breaking something. Perhaps not of being punished for doing so any longer, but there were deep roots of learned reaction that had yet to be routed.

“’S okay?”

“It’s alright.”

And then it cracked again, and in that little hand sat a periwinkle blue shard that was nearly as big as it was.

“Mine? My song?”

Din blinked, and for just a moment he thought he saw another Togruta standing at Kithak’s side, shorter but with similar markings, wearing strange robes, smiling softly. His eyes were pale and kind, like a strangely warped mirror of the Weapon Smith. Din blinked again, and it was gone.

Another hallucination? For a moment he heard the market stalls and barkers, smelled the spices, and heard the _tap-tap_ of a stick upon the ground, hymns on the breeze. Red fluttered at the corner of his eye and sand hissed under his feet instead of packed earth for a long moment, cold breathing under his skin.

He tilted his head, fist clenching momentarily at his side, and it was gone like a desert mirage.

… maybe he needed sleep more than thermals at the moment.

“Yes, little nebula,” his buir spoke softly. “This is your song.”

“Mine,” was whispered reverently as two little hands cupped the little blue crystal shard. “’is with me.”

_I am One with the Force, and the Force is with Me_.

Stepping forward before he could stop himself, Din found himself under the almost amused gaze of Kithak and the downright sparkling one of Isul. Little hands proffered the shard, which looked remarkably rounded for having just sheared off a larger section.

“It’s very nice,” he told the boy, who beamed at him. “Good color.”

“Mm!”

Without further ado, the boy threw himself at his father, who huffed dramatically before standing, the ornamentation on his headdress catching the light in a similar manner to the crystal hunk in his hand. Something rolled over him like smoke curling at a blaster barrel, but he dismissed it as nonsense like all the other unfortunate side effects of nearly freezing to death.

“What is it?”

“Rarer than beskar these days, is what it is,” the Togruta’s lekku curled at the end, twisting with thought. “The Empire damn near destroyed every place that it budded to make the karking Death Star and other experimental weaponry in the name of genocide.”

While that was part of a thought, rarer than beskar meant credits, it was overwhelmed by the sudden clear understanding why Kithak had enmeshed himself in the Outer Rim. Why he’d slipped himself through the fingers of the Empire to live with significantly less luxury than someone of his accomplishments usually did.

“You know how they built the Death Star?”

“One of my professors did a lot of research involving kyber,” suddenly Kithak looked tired, older than his years. “And I was in a unique position at the time.”

That explained nothing, but was quite foreboding, actually.

A mirthless smile twitched at the corners of a carnivore’s mouth, pulling light from dark eyes. There was violence and memory and some gaping, empty wound there that had never healed, and Din cursed his curiosity.

The past was the past, it was the future Path that mattered.

“Doesn’t matter much now,” Isul hummed quietly, a sweet sound, holding the blue kyber. Kithak softened again, the warmth turning the edges of his smile wry and melancholy rather than brittle and biting. “But it certainly is pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Din thought of the brief moment of seeing that Togruta in strange robes who could have been Kithak’s brother, thought of the way that his skin buzzed, and a dead moon called in the distance. “Pretty. Not my style, but nice.”

For some reason, Kithak laughed, brilliant joy sliding over his face and like the suns over the dunes on Tatooine, bringing a warmth Din hadn’t even noticed was missing. The Weapon Smith put the hunk of crystal into one of the pouches at his hip and place his now free hand against Isul’s back.

“No, I rather suspect black would suit you better than blue.”

Well that wasn’t unnerving at all.

He much preferred their beskar to weird fancy rocks, no matter what they could potentially be used to create. Din didn’t need destruction like that, only the power enough to return home again, and the beskar was enough for that when it was found.

It didn’t carry ghosts, only legacy.


	6. Chapter 6

There was a curl of unease under his breastbone, fluttering with not quite anxiety, a caged predator bird hidden in his ribcage.

This was an environment that he was not meant to venture into, the world outside honorable contracts, outside of the structure he’d built for himself. There were limits to what he’d allow himself to do and they had been painstakingly discovered over the course of his tenure as bounty hunter. As a sentry he was sent out to keep them aware of the world, to guard them from afar and be the first line of defense, to know their enemies and weaknesses.

He’d had to learn his limits, his own soft spots, to do this reliably. Experience, that ache of _not right_ told him that this was going to be close to those same limits. Like a knife near the belly.

Din rarely took outside jobs, but he’d done it before without feeling like he was walking into a firing squad devoid of his armor. Usually, he’d trust those instincts and return the fob, the Covert didn’t begrudge him standing by his instincts and they would endure if need be.

As they always had.

As he hoped they did long after Din’s instincts finally failed him, when he finally forgot his limits, and the gnashing teeth of the galaxy swallowed him whole.

The Path would bury him in the end, but he’d be the ground the future walked upon. This was The Way.

Sometimes he heard about the bounty hunters who did take the unauthorized hunts he rejected, the pieces of them that were found, or the remaining gear sold off by scavengers. That was vindication enough when he felt he may have failed his people, but _this one.._. it was a different sort of feeling.

Listening to that which had told him that hairs raised on the neck were a threat, that the wind was about to turn and let his prey know he was near. It was the part that told him to pack extra rations, digestive tablets that were water soluble; it was what had kept him alive. And yet.

And _yet_.

There was also something like anticipation simmering in his veins, and it wasn’t the excitement of a challenging hunt. It wasn’t the spark of vibrant challenge of finding someone worth the trouble of catching or witnessing as another of his people received the beskar they deserved.

That the Mandalorians were born from and for, two halves of a whole, the song and the singer, the soul and the heart.

This was something else.

So he took the job, knowing that this could be the point where his luck finally turned and he became the dust beneath the feet of his people.

_Tread softly, young warrior. You walk on the backs of your forebears as you walk The Path._

_Stand strong, young warrior. You are supported by the bones of your forebears as you build The Path._

_Have faith, young warrior. You are walking a Path untrod by your forebears and so you Find it for the future._

He never forgot those lessons taught to him calmly by his buir, hands steadying him when he wavered, answering questions he needn’t learn on his own. The words all Mandalorian children learned in one way or another, when they walked beside someone on the Path. Even if they did not choose The Way, their people were their people, and they would walk hand in hand, even if they weren’t a Pathfinder.

Din had chosen to wear the helmet and lead forward, to take the hands of those blinded outside of the focus of the helmet and guide them on the Path. All of them were warriors, but not all had chosen to dedicate themselves to the Path.

They did not wear the helmet because they knew that they would want to remove it. To know oneself was commendable, and there was no shame in choosing to be Guided.

For some they could not bind themselves to the beskar, to The Way, their calling pulled elsewhere. Other Coverts did not have all the same traditions, all shifting to fit their people, to survive as they could, but they had the Path, even if steps were not always safe, not always in sync, they were steady.

_Trust yourself, young warrior. You are on The Path, and your feet may falter but your heart knows The Way._

Din knew that he should prepare as best he could because things rarely went how he expected, when his luck had been so low lately. Normally he’d hit a small positive streak before it broke the negative completely, but he hadn’t been so lucky yet.

The unease hadn’t relaxed, but the second he decided to turn towards Kithak’s shop before leaving Nevarro the sharpness of his awareness softened. His heart uncoiled from his lungs and the predator under his skin eased from its hypervigilance once more. It was logical, to see the Weapon Smith before he left on an uncertain hunt.

One could never be too prepared, after all.

It was good to at least restock his basic necessities before he left, even if it _was_ to go after some fifty-year-old bounty.

Besides, Kithak usually knew what Din might need on his hunt with that uncanny sense of a buir bullying a child into a warm coat.

And… maybe it would be nice to see the kids before he left.

“– edged laser rifle has a tendency to overheat,” an unfamiliar voice was rasping quietly, rough and clearly damaged as Din entered. “Not good for prolonged fire.”

“What about a Corellian cooling unit?” Shiishacca’s voice called with curiosity, her interest in learning clear. “If you managed to hybridize the system –”

Din tuned out the rest of the technical talk, focusing instead on the battered man that the girl was speaking to, who was slowly cleaning a pressure sensor. Despite what looked to be more wounds than skin, the man was skilled enough to know how to do so with the delicate wiring exposed. Automatically working with skilled, easy movements that were only weakened by the damage in dark hands.

The man wore a headwrap modified from a Tusken Raider’s gear, some kind of breathing apparatus attached to it. It was more technologically advanced than the Tuskens tended towards, so it was likely an invention of Kithak’s.

Despite the brace on the man’s left leg, the broken curl of fingers and the heavy bandaging under loose tunics, Din knew that this man was dangerous. Knew that even though the hairs on his neck didn’t raise in awareness of sudden violence, this was a threat he could easily step wrong with. That even broken and bandaged could easily take a life.

Yet he sat with Kithak’s daughter unattended, and while Shiishacca was more able to defend herself than Isul, who tended to freeze when threatened, the Togruta was _very_ protective of his children. Which meant that this stranger was granted some measure of trust from a somewhat overbearing father with the means to toss a Wookie.

It meant that he was likely someone to keep an eye on, as both a danger and a potential ally.

Kithak had dangerous friends, including the Covert.

“Mando!” the little Wookie trilled happily. “Did you need something? Papa’s not done with the hyperdrive bank yet.”

“Was wondering if you have any pressure charges,” he asked after a moment, feeling the stranger watching him. “I’m running out.”

“I’ll get some! Half a dozen?”

“That’ll do.”

“Get him a new cleaning kit as well,” Kithak exited the back, one hand absently pulling goggles off his face to stuff into a pocket. “And chill water purifier pack. It was busted last I checked his junk ship.”

Not junk.

The Razor Crest was a good ship, no matter what Kithak’s engineering degrees might say. It’d saved Din’s hide more than once, even if it was a little patchwork. It was home away from home.

“Okay, papa!”

As Shiishacca was moving into the back, Isul was leaving it trailing after his buir and the children expertly danced around each other, making faces. The girl tweaked a little chubby lek and turned away before she saw the boy’s affronted expression that turned into a pout as he followed his father. She was going to find braids in her fur again for that, likely, and she’d need to brush out mats.

Silver blue eyes caught on Din and the child made a high pitched almost chirping sound before rocketing into his leg like a little black projectile.

“Knight!”

Warmth slid through his chest, overpowering what lingering unease for his bounty he felt.

“Hello, Isul.”

Little hands patted at his leg before the boy backed up, twisting fingers quickly in a slur of questions, lekku twitching. Tiny dusty boots _tap-tapped_ around him as the Twi’lek did a quick circle around Din’s frame, examining him with those wide eyes, expression probably trying for serious.

“Not hurt,” he told the kid, fondly amused. “No need to worry.”

‘No Lie/Truth’? one little hand asked as Isul tilted his head in almost disbelief.

Kithak was teaching this kid how to worry in all the worst ways, and Din knew that if he _had_ been hurt, he would have admitted it to those wide eyes and anxious mouth.

Then he’d have been scolded, and depending, the Togruta may have even called on the medics in the Covert to come deal with him.

“I promise. I’m not hurt.”

A bright little smile was like a kick in the chest, and Din sighed when Isul turned away to scramble up onto the counter in a well-practiced maneuver. The nameless injured man that Din couldn’t let himself forget reached out automatically to steady the boy, arm trembling slightly. The stranger grunted as Kithak did something behind him, and Din watched as the Togruta set an empty vapor filter next to Isul.

Something hissed, likely the air system rigged into that Tusken Raider mask, and Din had a feeling there was bacta in there.

Lung damage could be killer in and of itself in the Outer Rim, running the risk of illness and infirmity where dust lung was already prevalent on most worlds. That Kithak was using expensive bacta to keep this man alive said something, but Din couldn’t hear all the words.

Kithak gave the injured man a _look_ , and the man lasted an impressive amount of time impassively beneath it before slumping and looking away.

Familiar with that chastisement, Din figured that the man hadn’t done something he was told to. Something that Kithak would call ‘ridiculous Mandalorian tendencies’ in himself or the Covert, and a lack of common sense in others. Neither of which were particularly flattering ways of being regarded, but Din was practically inured to it at this point.

A fluffy stuffed tooka came flying out of the back and smacked into Isul with deadly accuracy, Shiishacca snickering with box in hand as her brother tipped with the force but didn’t fall. The child practically vibrated in place, grabbing the stuffed toy that was nearly the same size as him off his face.

“Squish!” he seemed delighted instead of offended at the projectile, arms wrapping around the plush toy. “See?”

The boy lifted it up to show the same way he had that blue crystal which was nowhere in sight and Din nodded in approval.

“Very nice.”

Din may need to have a of a moment to himself later because this kid had changed drastically from the quiet shell of trauma he’d been when Kithak brought him home. His sister was different too, but she hadn’t been so frightened and had needed more assurance that she wasn’t a beast of burden; that she was an intelligent, unique _person._ She hadn’t feared pain in the same way as Isul had, and their experiences in slavery had been very different.

Both awful, but singularly unique, and yet still the same in ways Din couldn’t know personally.

“Mm. Squish,” the boy nuzzled his face into the toy. “My Squish.”

Behind the boy, Kithak’s face softened with affection and the large man leaned forward so that his left and right lekku framed the boy. There was a gritting sort of noise, entirely inhuman, and then the Togruta pressed his nose between little gray freckled lekku.

“You’re pretty squish too, my little nebula,” the man said, tickling up the boy’s sides. “Does that mean you’re _my_ squish?”

“Papa!” giggled the Twi’lek. “No Squish!”

“No?”

Overstated confusion on brilliantly marked features as the man widened his dark eyes down at his son, whose head was tilted back and eyes sparkling. His lekku curled in towards Isul, the boy’s own tiny lekku jumped with happiness.

“No!”

“Well… if you’re not my squish, then are you… my _lunch_?”

With that, the man swung the boy up into his arms and bared his fangs exaggeratedly, play biting at those chubby little lekku and Isul’s face. Screaming with laughter, tiny fangs flashing, the little Twi’lek wriggled in his buir’s grip but didn’t let go of his stuffed tooka for even a moment.

“Papa! No eat!”

“No?”

“No!”

“But I’m so _hungry_!”

“ _Pa_ pa!”

“Just a _nibble_!”

More shrieking laughter.

As the entirely too wholesome sight went on in the background – Din felt his teeth aching, honestly – Shiishacca set her box on the counter with an impressive roll of her eyes. He was pretty sure her physiology made that difficult, but kudos to her for learning out of sheer exasperation with her family.

“I told you,” she said pointedly to the stranger who was staring motionlessly at the display of childish laughter and playful Togruta snarls. “It’s always like this.”

“I should never have doubted you,” was the raspy assertion, that too still body language speaking of nostalgia and empty, resigned grief. It was oddly familiar. “You have my sincerest apologies.”

Sniffing imperiously, the Wookie ducked her head and smiled almost shyly, fur rippling with fondness as Kithak spun around with Isul in the air.

“Can you tell me more about the coils on the pressure charges?” she asked the man after a moment, curiosity shining in her yellow eyes as she organized Din’s purchases. “Papa has me looking at them in my next module.”

“Sure.”

Somehow, Din found himself pulled into the conversation as well, faintly aware of the child hanging from Kithak’s montrals with that stuffed tooka squished underneath him in the background. The topic slid from coils, to casing, to the venting needed on a TL-376 charge and energy rifle until they hit shield technology.

Din had bad luck with shields when he used them as intended, but otherwise… well.

“You did _what_ with a Rodian shield emitter?!” the raspy voice sounded incredulous, more wet with his shock. “That’s ridiculous.”

While he was still oddly motionless, Din was able to pick up on the subtle nuances of exhaustion and creeping pain on the nameless injured man.

Obviously, this stranger was being stubborn if he’d felt the hard persistence of the Togruta’s parenting powers. He was pushing boundaries out of pride, or perhaps even genuine enjoyment of the conversation, though Din couldn’t say why.

It was as if he’d never spoken to someone who told him that using electrode caltrops on a heavy planet was stupid, before. Din had had them malfunction one too many times to call them reliable, and he’d tell this guy that until it sank in if need be.

Some gear, no matter how hypothetically handy, just wasn’t worth the hassle in certain conditions.

“It worked,” he defended calmly, well used to these reactions from Kithak. “Didn’t have a single problem bringing him in.”

“You made him _swallow_ it?” Shiishacca looked so very torn between being awed and disapproving. “This is why papa doesn’t like to give you things that aren’t vacuum sealed, isn’t it?”

Yeah, the stomach acid of a Devaronian was nothing to scoff at, and that emitter had been a loss. Kithak hadn’t denied the resourcefulness, but he’d also given Din safety lectures on his next two visits and somehow the whole Covert had known by the time he got home.

At this point, Din was numb to any teasing regarding this incident and simply took pride in his ingenuity considering the circumstances.

“Karking madman,” the stranger sounded almost impressed. “Was it even remote activated?”

“Not that one, no.”

The giggling petered off in the background as Kithak set the dazed little Twi’lek down on his feet and he staggered, stuffed tooka and all, towards the back, blinking sleepy eyes. Shiishacca squeaked as she was lifted from her seat and spun around in powerful arms well, but she ululated with surprised laughter and clung onto her buir. The man simply held her for a moment, the girl hanging in his arms with her face tucked into his neck before he set her down.

“Everything set out?”

“Yes papa!” she leaned into the hand he pet over her head, purring quietly. “Mando’s stuff is ready.”

“Go tuck in your brother while I self him up?”

“Okay! Bye Mando!”

“Bye, Shiishacca.”

It wasn’t until he got back to his ship and taken off, finally looking through the things given to him, that he noticed that one of Isul’s toys had gotten mixed in. A little glow cube that made different tones when sides were pushed in sequence, multi color spectrum meant for multiple species clearly in play.

It also wasn’t until he was landing on a dust ball planet that he realized that they had all been speaking Mando’a the whole time.

The man in the makeshift mask, the one that Kithak had gone to save, that he’d wanted _Din_ to save, was a Mandalorian.

Of _course_ he was.

No wonder his body language had been so familiar.

* * *

Isul by _laternenfisch_ on tumblr!

Kithak and Isul from _anelegantoffense_ on tumblr!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Lou! Because family can be hard to deal with, but it's the family you choose that always has your back!
> 
> Even when you do dumb things.

Honestly, he’d had better days. Probably worse ones too, but he was coming up short on comparisons, currently.

Everything hurt.

Every breath was a creaking, grinding reminder of his cracked sternum and ribs, of the ache in his back and twitching across his skin. There had been an almost crackling wetness to his breath before he’d been able to take a moment and find equilibrium. Being electrocuted wasn’t fun, getting a chest full of Mudhorn wasn’t fun, finding out that a child was what he had to sacrifice to get so much beskar wasn’t fun.

Karking Jawas.

Knowing that he was being, quite frankly, an _idiot_ to go after the little green child without backup in a place full of Imps. Watching the Armorer melt the insignia of the Empire off the beskar had been cathartic, but he’d known the second he stepped out that door with those bricks that he’d be back. The plaintive, confused cry of the child had twisted something helplessly in Din’s chest behind all the physical damage.

It had been… a _trying_ few days.

The scuffle with Paz hadn’t helped do anything other than exacerbate his injuries, but it had also been one of the sour points where Din could say that the ass hadn’t been… _entirely_ wrong in calling him out. He had done the unthinkable by leaving a child in the hands of the Empire, no matter that he’d already known he was going to end up going back. It wasn’t that he’d taken a job for those who had driven them to the brink of extinction like Paz had said though; if the larger Mandalorian had known about the Child... well.

He’d have more than a few cracked ribs.

Din was Mandalorian, he was Pathfinder, and he knew his Way.

He’d stumbled but he knew how to right himself, so he was going to get the child back and figure it out from there. There was nothing that could be said that could right his wrongs, but action was the language of their people, and he spoke this language better.

And that lead him to how he was stumbling blindly through the empty, dark market with the little green bundle in his arms, keeping just ahead of his pursuers.

The whole damn Guild was on his tail the second he’d stepped out of the complex he’d massacred with all the skill he’d been taught. Little claws were hooked groggily into the straps under the newly singing beskar that had been bestowed upon him.

His beskar, his new skin, the echo of his soul; its song was of recklessness and determination, of restitution and renewal. It would grow into a symphony someday, but as it was, it simply sang of the tattoo that beat in his sore, battered chest as he tried to plan around the dozens of armed guns coming his way.

Turned out, he didn’t need to.

“Stay quiet,” was hissed in a frankly chilling tone from a familiar voice. “And get in the box.”

His head swiveled to the side to stare up at Kithak, who had a hovering load of cargo at his side and the top off of a large vacu-seal crate.

“Wh –”

“Quiet!” a hand caught in his cloak and lifted him off the ground to deposit him into the box. Like a child. “No moving!”

Din settled dazedly down against the bottom of the crate, which was surprisingly roomy for a cargo container, and watched a false bottom slide over him. In the next instant the lid was reattached according to his feed, and suddenly all of his various sensors fritzed.

Ah. Signal blocker.

Well, everyone with a fob who’d been following him,and the child were going to be quite confused all of a sudden.

In the silence and the dark, he could taste the wetness of thick copper in the back of his throat from the tissue damage of the Mudhorn. The child squirmed slightly in his arms, still sedated but more awake than it had been before, perhaps noticing the sudden change of circumstances.

The way that Din had looked down at this child and thought _I know you_ when he’d never seen anything like it before.

The jittering near panic and yawning potential doom that had lingered behind his eyes since he’d stepped out of the covert to recover the child eased. His heart didn’t thunder quite so painfully in his chest and he let his eyes close on a slow, careful breath to ease some of the lingering tension that pinched his wounds.

It was a good thing that he wasn’t claustrophobic, because they were in that crate, Din curled around the child, for some time. His crono told him that an hour passed when he thought to check it, and he couldn’t tell if they’d moved at all, the world silent and no vibration moving through the crate from the hover loader.

He knew the same way he knew when danger passed, that Kithak did not stray from beside the crate which hid them in all that time. That he remained watching over Din and his strange little charge, and that let him close his eyes and focus on breathing through the pains of his body. Let him visualize the recession of swelling and the soothing of aggravated tissue, bones pulling together again.

It was the best way he’d found to work through pain, to know what the process of healing entailed and to encourage himself to do so.

Sometimes he felt like he healed faster this way.

Which was ridiculous, but at least Din managed to avoid the medics for longer if he let himself rest and go through the motions of visualization.

Somehow, focusing on the cessation of pain, seemed to make stop focusing on how awful he felt in the meantime. Mind of matter was a ridiculous thing, but it seemed to work for him when he wasn’t around someone that he could trust to put his arms back into the socket or pull shrapnel from his sides.

The Child against his front was a barely noticeable weight in his arms, but his heavy, heavy heart felt every ounce of the little bugger. It was sleepy with drugs and lethargic because of intense emotions that Din’s abandonment and the hands of the Empire had caused. While he knew that what he’d done was reckless and idiotic of the highest order, he couldn’t help but be relieved that he’d made that choice to save it.

Even if the Covert might have forgiven him eventually, Din was pretty sure that he wouldn’t have been able to forgive himself for putting a child through that. For giving the enemy something that they wanted, no matter the amount of beskar returned to them.

It was silent inside the crate, and though he was curled up uncomfortably around his poor abused abdomen, Din was relieved.

It meant that it hadn’t gotten loud enough outside to permeate the sound dampening on the smuggling crate.

Time wasn’t an issue when being escorted by a nearly 8-foot Togruta – not counting the montrals – who had publicly thrown a Wookie. It wasn’t unusual for the man to be out dealing with supply deliveries late into the night, leaving his shop guarded by his frankly terrifying security system. Din didn’t know if the strange Mandalorian was still there, but Shiishacca herself was pretty impressive with a pulse rifle and a biometric net.

Above himself and his self-appointed charge, the lid hissed and then slid aside, sound once again returning to his world.

“– n’t forget the bone mender!”

“Yes Papa!”

The false bottom was removed, and then familiar hands and arms were pulling him out of the crate he’d been unceremoniously dumped into. Din’s arms stayed locked around his prize, which was snuggly held against his warmed beskar, ribs throbbing beneath in time with his heartbeat.

It was uncomfortable, to say the least, but he was alive.

They both were.

“You made a right mess this time, didn’t you Mando?”

Looking up from where his helmet had drifted down towards his chest with the lack of adrenaline to keep him up and aware, he saw concern in those dark eyes as the Togruta looked him over. Kithak looked to be focusing on his chest mostly, looking past the bundle as if he could see the breaks in Din’s ribs himself. For all he knew, the man could with those montrals, sensing the grinding of cracks and sucking of cartilage.

He could honestly say that he could have dealt with this situation better, but he’d been too focused on righting a wrong he’d committed.

Kithak’s hands hovered over Din’s sides, eyes finally straying to the Child on his chest held in his tired hands under dusty brown cloth.

“May I?” was asked quietly.

Strange, how a man who had always been a comfort suddenly felt – well. It wasn’t instinct, it wasn’t even a sense really, it was entirely the fight or flight reflex that had made him storm a building full of Empire holdouts.

Togruta were… big.

Always easy to forget that that race was so tall as a whole that they could comfortably converse with Wookie and Quermian. Kithak stood a head and some change over Din, wider as well, his welding apron on his front with various torch attachments hooked to it, plated with metal. Heavier than beskar and just as easy for the Weapon Smith to move in.

He was a friend, but Din couldn’t make himself let the Child go.

His beskar might whisper of tall defenses and his instincts might have brought him into Kithak’s path, but he could only remember the cry of fear that had followed the infant. Could only remember that the last time he’d handed it off it had been to potential terrible ends.

Din had been doing a lot of not thinking lately, and he was really regretting that now.

“There’s a bounty –” he managed to rasp out, curving over his burden despite the aches and sharp pains. “The child –”

“No child will come to harm in my home,” Kithak swore with a grin full of sharp fangs, entirely accepting of Din’s inability to give Kithak this. “Now stay quiet and be calm. I will handle anyone who comes through my door, as I always do.”

There wasn’t more time to argue, so Din let the tall Togruta support him back into the little home that he’d never once set foot into. Watched as an entire wall slid open to reveal surveillance equipment aimed at the shop and the roof of their home. Little Isul was seated next to the other Mandalorian, tiny hand gripping a larger gnarled one with fewer bandages than last he’d seen it.

The Twi’lek’s eyes looked huge in his face, full of worry and with tear stains shiny on dark cheeks freckled gray. In his other hand, he held one of the limbs of his stuffed Tooka, Squish, and the toy dangled over the side of the seat beside him.

Shiishacca stepped up next to them with a medical kit as Din was sat down onto a chair with enough cushion and backing that he could let himself lean against with a quiet, near silent breath of relief. The Child stirred against his chest, making a small, inquisitive noise, perhaps at the change in tension in the environment which surrounded them.

“I’m going to have to remove your armor to get that bone mender on the clay dust you call ribs,” Kithak warned as his daughter and assistant went about snapping medical apparatus together. “So figure out what you want to do with the baby.”

Properly chubby lekku twitched with vague worry across the room, but also curiosity at the bundle in Din’s arms. A little sniffle and the boy slid off the seat he shared with the stranger to pitter-pat closer to look at the Child.

Their hands dragged apart, like the stranger and Isul didn’t want to let go.

“Baby?” was whispered like a secret. “Knight’s baby?”

“Just like you, little nebula!” a large dusky hand, sans gloves, settled between lekku briefly. “He went and did something foolishly Mandalorian and found himself a baby.”

“Like me? Not _ba_ by!” silvery blue eyes got ridiculously wide as Din’s armor was stripped from his arms, leaving him in the tunic beneath. “Like _you_? Knight’s a Papa?”

It was – perhaps not so surprisingly – those imploringly large eyes looking up at him, that made Din’s arms untense from where they held the little green problem. He handed it off to Shiishacca, who purred at the sight of big black eyes blinking at her no doubt ridiculously, a little three clawed hand patting at her fur.

The little black hand that had been wrapped around the stranger’s slid over Din’s gloved one with a tiny squeeze for comfort. Like Din was the one who needed it this time, not the little skittish boy who cried when people came in with injuries.

Not the boy who locked himself in the fresher in panic, but the man who killed people for a living, needed comfort.

What a galaxy they lived in.

Despite his nervous disposition, Isul was also comfortable with Din now that he’d gotten used to him, and a little hand patted at the beskar admiringly, chubby lekku curling. The stuffed Tooka flopped softly against Din’s side with each gentle little pat of that hand, two fingers partially curled around to hold it.

“Not a Papa,” his stomach swooped as he spoke the rough words even as Kithak stabbed him with an anesthetic. “But thanks for the compliment, Isul.”

“Man’lori’ns trouble,” was stated with the utmost wisdom of a kid who sometimes took naps in boxes of thermal detonators and nearly got shipped to the Covert. “Knight has _baby_. Funny Knight!”

Just what he wanted people to think of him when part of his job was having a good, well, _intimidating_ reputation. That Mando is the funny one, didn’t you hear?

Not that he’d have much of a job after this.

Din thunked his head once against the seat back behind him, watching the screens in front as Kithak looped something technological around his middle. Isul let go of his hand to pat curiously over the beskar slowly being piled at Din’s side better, humming sweetly the beat of the war drum that had driven him to make such a foolish choice.

There wasn’t any sound from the feed outside the shop, but he got the dubious honor of watching some of the storm troopers that remained and bounty hunters skulk around. The hunters, however, took one look at the shop and hesitated. A few Zabrak even traded looks before shaking their heads and backing away to try their luck elsewhere. Predator species recognizing the turf of a bigger predator, and Din would have found it more amusing if they weren’t hunting _him_ and avoiding the krayt den.

Whatever collective intelligence was amongst them, it had just walked off.

He could relate.

“Papa laughin’,” Isul mumbled nonsensically, since the man in question hadn’t said a word, looking at himself in the sheen of the beskar. “Thinkin’ him scary!”

“Hate to break it to ya kid, but your buir _is_ kinda scary,” was the stranger’s dry answer to that, quiet enough and docile enough that Din felt his awareness drift to him and away again. A nonissue, at present. “I’ve met war worms less likely to take a chunk outta me.”

Din couldn’t help but agree, especially if it was in the defense of his kids.

Imagine if one of those idiots tried to enter the shop and asked for a _child_? Oh, yeah, that’d be the _last_ thing they ever did.

Still, despite Kithak’s rather _rousing_ reputation, there was only so long that it would hold people off from checking here. It was a _hefty_ bounty. Din would need to be on his way sooner rather than later so that he didn’t draw attention to Kithak – and Isul and Shiishacca and whoever that other Mandalorian was – as well as potentially the Covert.

That would be the worst-case scenario.

“Nuh- _uh_. Papa nicest. Shiniest!”

“Whatever you say kid.”

Arguing over the semantics of how being intimidating didn’t preclude said ‘niceness’ seemed like a lot of work, especially when he’d watched Kithak chuck a Wookie. And also leap straight up nearly 20 feet to reach a fancy crystal that was wedged into a hole in his ship with little trouble.

Perfectly easy to work with as long as you didn’t badmouth or try to touch his foundlings, which seemed fair in Din’s opinion; still a terrifying concept to face in combat.

That was easily understood, the protection of the children, of his foundlings. It was sort of what made bile and shame burn in the back of his throat at the thought of Kithak finding out what Din had almost done. What he’d so recklessly thrown himself into _un_ doing at the cost of the safety and solidity of his place in the guild and one Nevarro.

He’d need to leave.

He’d need to – to abandon the Covert, to dangerous to stay attached to them.

There was going to be a price on his head the same as it was on the Child’s, and while someone might hesitate to kill the little green womp rat the same as he had… Din was fair game.

This was a fool’s errand, but he’d committed to this.

Just like the fool he was.

A soft coo drew his attention to the little green menace that had so peaked his conscience in a way he’d learned to deaden over the years. Little claws were entangled with Shiishacca’s fur as she purred at it, holding it against her chest and brushing her hands over long ears.

But something in him reached out to this weird green child, the kind of recognition he’d rarely felt in his life, and it looked back at him, reaching.

Din had made his choices, and he’d just have to live with them.

The only thing was, was making sure that he’d live long enough to _learn_ how to live with his foolish mistakes. Not that a foundling wasn’t a good reason to renege on a deal; slavery and kids were in the Covert code as things that crossed the line. He figured that unethical experimentation on a child was an unholy mix of the two and strangling his better sense had gotten him into this. Ethics he’d learned to curb over the years, but now they were back with a force.

His scolding from the Armorer was inevitable, but there were worse things. Even Paz wouldn’t be able to hold this against him, saving a child at the cost of a contract.

If he ever saw them again.

It was simply that he’d gone about the whole thing very impulsively, without the proper amount of forethought and planning. His gear was damaged, he’d nearly been killed a few times that his beskar had saved him – beskar nearly paid for in blood – and now he was to be Hunted.

This meant that he’d be unable to provide for the Covert, unable to do his duty to them, and that ached somewhere deep in his soul.

All that Din had had for years was his dedication to returning that which belonged to them and following The Way, marking the Path as he walked it. The Covert, the foundling, his people.

He’d jeopardized them all.

The Child cooed again, and Isul patted his sister’s leg curiously and she knelt so that he could look into that little green face.

“Hi,” was whispered quietly, and a little black hand slid over a slightly wrinkled forehead. “Baby.”

Making an almost croaking sound, those wide eyes focused on the little Twi’lek as Kithak worked his magic on Din’s bones. Little claws and little fingers tangled together and the sudden loss of pain in his chest made him feel slightly lightheaded.

For a brief, ridiculous moment, he thought he heard singing.

“Easy, Mando,” the Togruta murmured, laying a hand against the back of his neck comfortingly as he knelt to inspect the readings on his retrofitted bone mender. “Don’t pass out before I get some hydration and bacta into you.”

“Bacta?”

“Don’t think I can’t tell you perforated a lung somewhere along the way and tore it again with fighting through a contingent of Imperial dogs.”

Ah, right.

“Was necessary.”

An exasperated but fond look, a glance of unspeakable gentleness at the sight his children and the Child made together.

“Of course it was.”

Din closed his eyes inside his helmet, letting the man work, listening to the children and the cooing of the infant, the quiet words of the stranger here and there.

No matter what choices he’d made, there was no going back, only forward.

He was a Pathfinder, and this was The Way.


End file.
